


In the Quiet After

by TwisterTheCat



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, The Reichenbach Fall Spoilers, in which Sally is a good person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 10:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwisterTheCat/pseuds/TwisterTheCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Sally sees John after the funeral is in a Tesco.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Quiet After

The first time Sally sees John after the funeral is in a Tesco. He seems smaller, somehow, and he’s paler than she has ever seen him. He’s getting milk, she notices, but when he reaches for the carton, he stops for a moment. He takes a deep breath and swallows something down before retrieving it.

He is, she realizes for the first time, a man in mourning.  
As he turns around, he meets her eyes, and she knows he has caught her staring.  
“Hi John,” she manages to say.  
“Sally,” he returns, nodding his head a bit. He turns to leave, but she stops him.  
“Are you… alright?”  
He stares at her for what feels like a century before his mouth turns upright into a wry smile. He laughs once, hoarsely. “Am I alright?” he chokes out. A deep breath. “No, I’m really not.”  
She wants to ask him why, when Sherlock was a fake, a sham. When he was a criminal, when he wasn’t really anyone’s friend. When he wasn’t really a hero. However, something in John’s eyes stops her, and she feels her throat tighten.  
John is a good man, and she wonders how he was so thoroughly fooled.  
He turns around and leaves, holding only the carton of milk, the rest of his shopping forgotten.  
It occurs to her later that maybe he hadn’t been.

* * *

She isn’t sure what brings her to Baker Street the next night. She isn’t even sure if he’ll be there. She has a bottle of scotch in one hand, and she raises the next one hesitantly to knock on the door. Mrs. Hudson answers, her face red and blotchy from crying, and ushers her in.  
“I do hope you’ve come to apologize,” she says, chidingly. “John still won’t talk about it, but… well… he… Sherlock was a good boy.” She excuses herself into her flat, leaving Sally alone in the hallway.  
The door to 221B is open, and John is sitting alone in his armchair, staring into nothing. He turns to watch her as she enters, but he doesn’t say anything.  
She had a speech planned, but all she ends up saying is, “I’m sorry.” She holds up the scotch with one hand.  
He shakes his head and sighs. “I’ll get the glasses,” he says to her as he pushes himself out of the chair. He gestures for her to sit down as he moves to the kitchen.  
She notices, as she takes a seat near the coffee table, a picture of the two of them together. She doesn’t recognize it as them at first because they’re both smiling. Sherlock’s smile is different than the one she’s become accustomed to – the smug, delighted smile common to crime scenes and clever moments. She has never been looked at the way he looked at John in this photo, she thinks to herself. She wonders for the first time if the Sherlock John knew was a man worth knowing.  
Her train of thought is interrupted when John places the glasses on the table. “Mrs. Hudson took that one. It was a few days after her birthday, and we’d just gotten her this new camera, so she was constantly taking pictures of everything. It was right after The Geek Interpreter, you read that one, right? Of course you did. Anyways, the whole thing was just ridiculous. We’d just got back to the flat and changed into our clothes, and Mrs. Hudson asked us how it was playing dress up, and we just lost it. Completely cracked up because it was barmy and brilliant.” His voice cracks halfway through brilliant, and his hands are shaking as he pours the scotch. He takes another shuddering breath.  
“If you plan on telling me that I need help, you shouldn’t worry. I have an appointment with my therapist tomorrow. I don’t know how much good it’ll do. It didn’t help the last time. But. Well. I’ve got to try.”  
The words escape her lips before she can stop herself. “The last time..?”  
“Hmm? Oh, yeah.” He’s quiet for a moment. “You know I was an army doctor, right? Before… Anyways, I was in the army, and I got shot, and when they sent me back to London it was under the condition that I go and see this therapist.” He laughs. “I had this bloody awful limp… Well, I suppose you remember that. It was psychosomatic at that point… So I’d been seeing this therapist for awhile, and it wasn’t getting anywhere. She’s why I keep the blog, though. Therapeutic assignment. Anyways, a day with Sherlock did more for my fucking limp than my therapist ever could. Stopped seeing her after that.” He takes a long sip from the glass of scotch. “He was the best damn thing that ever happened to me, and nothing anyone can say will ever convince me otherwise.”  
They sit in silence for a long time, until the scotch is almost gone.  
“I meant it,” Sally says, finally, “I really am sorry.” She isn’t sure where this is coming from. She still hates Sherlock Holmes. She hates him for every rude comment, every infuriating dismissal, every time he made them feel superfluous in their own workplace. But the part of her that was a tiny bit glad he was dead is gone now. She finds herself mourning Sherlock Holmes for the sake of this seemingly ordinary man to whom he meant the world.  
“I know,” he says, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Thank you. Really.”  
Their eyes meet for a moment as she stands up, and she squeezes his shoulder before she begins to walk towards the door. “If you… if you need anything, just let me know?”  
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”

* * *

Later, she’s leaving a crime scene with Lestrade. It’s just the two of them in the police car, and there’s still this feeling of something heavy in the air. It’s been that way since the funeral that no one went to. Well, no one except Greg.  
“I talked to John yesterday,” she begins.  
He sighs. “How is he holding up?”  
“Badly? I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I never really knew him that well. It’s just… We were wrong, weren’t we. About him.” It’s not a question.  
“Yeah.” He struggles for a minute with what to say next. “I know it’s not our fault, but I just wish… I wish the bastard would’ve just come in for questioning and cleared everything up. Maybe he wouldn’t have thrown himself off the building, maybe he would’ve, I mean, we don’t know what happened with Moriarty or Brooks or whoever he was, but… I just wish he’d just done that one thing for me. It would’ve made me feel better about the whole business.”

* * *

Anderson comes over that night, and she feels like she should be glad for the company, but she isn’t. They order Chinese and open a bottle of wine. It’s been a long week for everyone, and the air in Scotland Yard is tense and ugly. There are little camps forming, and all of the sudden everyone has an opinion about Sherlock Holmes. Things they would never have said while he was alive suddenly come to light, and it makes her sick.  
“What’s gotten in to you?” Anderson asks. “You’ve been down all night.” He presses a kiss to her neck. They’re on the couch in her apartment, watching… something on the telly. She hasn’t been following it very well. She’s too distracted.  
“It’s just… I’ve been thinking. About Sherlock.”  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sally, we did what we should’ve done ages ago. It’s not our fault he finally realized what a fuck up he was.”  
She flinches. She’s called him worse, she knows, but somehow hearing Anderson call him a fuck-up now feels like a slap to the face. “You didn’t see John. He’s… he’s empty now. He really feels like he’s lost a part of himself. And I can’t help but wonder what he saw in Sherlock Holmes that makes him believe no matter what. They weren’t sleeping together or anything, but it’s like they were in love. That’s what he looks like, like someone who just lost the one person who meant everything. And I see him like that, and I think to myself, Sherlock Holmes can’t be a psychopath. Psychopaths don’t find people like John and keep them.  
“I see John and I know that even though Sherlock Holmes was a git, he couldn’t have been as bad as we thought. Maybe to us, sure. But there’s got to be something else that we never saw.”  
She turns away from him. “I don’t know. It’s just been bothering me.”  
Anderson just shakes his head. “I think you’ve had a little too much wine. Let’s get you to bed.”

* * *

She passes by Molly Hooper in the morgue one day and notices that she stands a little straighter than she used to. There’s something like purpose in Molly Hooper, and Sally can’t help but wonder about the change in her.  
She’s just glad someone is doing alright.

* * *

She buys the cheapest flowers the shop has, but they’re still flowers and she doesn’t make that much money anyways. On her way into the cemetery, she passes John, but he doesn’t see her. He’s been crying.  
There are already flowers on his grave, but she puts hers down anyways. It might do John some good to see that someone else cares, she thinks.  
“You’re a git,” she mutters, “for leaving him like that.”  
As she leaves, she thinks she sees a tall figure in a dark coat, but when she turns around to get a better look, there is nothing but trees. “If you’re going to haunt anybody,” she says, “Haunt him.”

In the cab ride later, she realizes that he already does.


End file.
